Twitter Quitters?

As I wrote about in my previous post, Twitter is one of the fastest growing community sites this year (for the month of February unique visitors to Twitter increased 1,382 percent year-over-year) and is becoming pervasive in the mainstream (largest volume of the population on Twitter was in the 35-49 age group) per Nielsen. No one can argue that that microblogging and, Twitter specifically, is on the rise – but does everyone love it? No. There is a growing trend of ‘Twitter Quitters’…heavy heavy users with a large following that attempt to ‘leave the nest’ (pun intended) and go tweet free. Even more interesting…they almost always come back. The LA Times profiles one of the more well known Twitter Quitters…Leo Laporte.

“They kind of have you,” said Laporte, who now has more than 100,000 followers on the service…..because you have to go where the community is.”

Not only do they have you…with today’s announcement, they are finally finding a way to monetize their model. From the WSJ:

“Fred Wilson, a Twitter investor and board member who is a partner at Union Square Ventures, says Twitter will make money by “following the money,” or building on the ways that others are developing businesses based on the service.“

This will be interesting to watch. Are you willing to pay for something you’ve gotten for free thus far?